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| Thursday, May 2, 2002 |
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Is anonymity a right? 
| | The creative geniuses who have given us the Web still insist that anonymity is one of its cornerstones. If so, the foundation is wormy. The longer that Web-heads insist on anonymity, the more the credibility and usefulness of their creation will be undermined. Already, one of the first lessons taught in middle-school computer labs is to regard everything on the Web as you might a puff adder -- apt to bite you at any moment. Is this the best we can expect from the information revolution? |
| | So instead of worrying ourselves silly about ways to protect these few who are afraid to stand up for their words and actions, we should be going in the other direction: making it harder to be anonymous, marginalizing those who try. |
| | I think he's right to make the distinction. I also think the problem is solvable, if we create an infrastructure of personal identity — one that grants each of us maximum autonomy, and still allows law enforcement folks to discover the identities of miscreants who might otherwise use the system to hide like snipers. I think it can be done. |
| | And I think we've only begun to do it. |
Here comes a swell
| | My latest SuitWatch Newsletter, Finishing the Third Wave, is up. It talks about industrial-grade insanities such as CARP and the Dallas Morning News deep linking prohibition in the context of Alvin Toffler's landmark book The Third Wave, which came out in 1980 and was remarkably prescient about what's going on today. A sample: |
| | Many of Toffler's predictions are coming true: intelligent environments, de-massification of the media, a new "social memory", the "electronic cottage", home-centered society, new codes of behavior, the rise of the "prosumer", radically changed schools, the break-up of the nation-state.... |
| | Meanwhile the Second-Wave mentality persists, and it's filled with fear of autonomous Third-Wave employees and customers. It wants to turn the PC back into an appliance, the OS into an instrument of control and the Net into a plumbing system for pumping "content" to captive "consumers." |
Speaking of speaking
| | I'll be giving a keynote about how Linux is good for business at the Strictly Business Expo in Minneapolis a week from today. If any of ya'll want to give me some ideas or quotable thoughts, feel free. |
| | Examples are helpful. Stories, anecdotes, whatever. |
Use it or lose it
| | Eric Norlin: Why Identity Now? Making the tie between identity and innovation. I'd extend it to pretty much everything. |
| | In Cluetrain we talked about the shift in market power from supply to demand, from producers to consumers — who were quickly becoming the autonomous and independent creatures we call customers. |
| | But that power won't finish shifting until customers have fully independent and autonomous identities. And privacy is a huge part of that. |
| | Also of entrepreneurship. Y'know, there's a reason we call it "private enterprise." |
| | We need control over our identity. The Net's very infastructure depends on private autonomy, independence and control. |
| | Meanwhile I've been wondering what I'll talk about in my keynote at JabberConf Europe 2002 in Munich this coming June. Right now I'm thinking I'll make the subject identity (or at least stressing it). Jabber is the IM and presence infrastructure that might be in the best position to drive an ID infrastructure as well. |
| | Hm. I might even go as myself. |
Also rather similar to The Brain, no?
| | Even if you don't care what happens when you combine SOAP, Google and other cool stuff, this is cool as ice. |
Quite an unlikeness, don't you think?
| | I took the blog archetype test again, and this time I tested out as ... |
| | 
You are an AKMA.
You stand out from the crowd because of deeply held beliefs in the unknown.
You ponder endlessly and treat everyone, even fucknozzles, with respect.
WWAD (what would AKMA do) guides your actions.
Take the What Blogging Archetype Are You test at GAZM.org |
Agreed
| | Cam: Regardless of how you view it, Mozilla is becoming a very good browser. Probably not a complete replacement for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but a very good alternative. I am completely in love with the tabbed-windows feature in Mozilla. Wow. |
I thought the flat line meant she was dead.
| | But pretty much everything on Richard's list is current stuff, so I guess she's still alive. |
| | I see here Alexa's toolbar only works on Windows and IE5. I used to use it on Mac OS9, but I guess they discontinued that one. At the time I also used to run Windows, but I much prefered the simpler Mac version of the Alexa toolbar, since it didn't kinda take over the browser. It was a simple little separate toolbar. |
| | [Later...] Richard shows what Alexa does in the IE6 toolbar. It's not bad, but I'm wondering if it's allowed to float like the old Mac one was. |
Good kid
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